


All The Strings Attached

by Drindalis



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Eddie's going nowhere, M/M, Many many song references, Richie's not relevant anymore, Songwriter!Eddie, Until he gets hit by inspiration (literally), musician au, singer!richie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-05-01 18:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19183222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drindalis/pseuds/Drindalis
Summary: Richie's a disgraced singer who can't write lyrics to save his life, even if it means rising out of the deep hole he's found himself in.Eddie Kaspbrak is a songwriter with the most horrible, crippling case of stage fright that he hasn't been able to overcome even to make his dreams come true.When Richie throws his lyric notebook out the window, he expected to hit the dumpster, not a chestnut-haired cutie who promptly tries to return it to him (with improvements).Is it wrong of me to not want half?I want all of you, all the strings attached.-Shawn Mendes





	1. The Beginning

The apartment was shabby, anyone could have told you that from a glance. The sink was full of dirty dishes, a small rust stain having formed on one bowl from the continuous drippage of water over a long period of time. Wadded up bits of paper litter the wobbly and off center tabletop, with only small scattered piles of ash and stray marijuana crumbles aside from the sole occupant taking residence there. In the background, a busted television hissed out the news in a garbled sort of manner. The man at the table sat with hunched shoulders, his long and frizzy black curls hanging over his forehead to brush teasingly over the very notebook he was scribbling into like his life depended on it. He would write something very quickly, halt, strikethrough whatever he had just written, before huffing and dragging his eraser over the page as if the words written there had personally offended him. Finally he ripped the page from its spiral bound home and crumpled it up with an air of frustration, vaguely tossing the ball in the direction of the garbage can. When he did so, he sent a chorus of flies scattering from their resting place atop the trash can and its contents.

_no ones ever left me quite this sore_

_i thought id been hurt before-_

_needle in the red gonna wind up dead gotta get ya out of my head-_

The man hummed to himself in thought before holding the notebook closer to his face, pushing his oversized glasses up his nose with his middle finger. 

Writing lyrics fucking sucked.

This was Richie Tozier, the long since fallen-from-grace musician whose last public appearance resulted in an actual riot breaking out in the middle of the show as half the crowd tried to kill him and the other half tried to kill each other. Scandals? He'd been brave enough to dip a toe in each one. Magazines? The sordid and sloppy details of Richie's life had been splattered lewdly all over national television and gossip rags around the world. Luckily since he'd taken to shaving his stubble more frequently and allowing his short hair to grow out, the dark curls just barely brushing the tops of his shoulders, he had become almost completely unrecognizable. It didn't help that his inability to perform as himself without being heckled off the stage or harassed by the crowd kept him pretty much house bound at first. Despite the fact that he knew he'd hit rock bottom and the proceeded to screw up badly in various ways, he still had hope that if he could just write something good, no, good was for suckers, he needed something _great_. A great song to spin the story; change the news of his breakup and murmured whispers that she left him because he was _garbage _to something more in his favor. Hell, Richie didn't even care if he ever became an A-lister. He just wanted to get back to where he was before everything Happened.__

__His fingers involuntarily clenched on the open notebook page, smearing ink across the paper. Richie didn't want to think about how it all started, how everything fell apart._ _

__He had only drank one beer._ _

__It shouldn't have been a big deal._ _

__It was, because he was Richie Tozier. Or, he _was,_ past tense. Nobody gave a shit about Richie Tozier anymore. His ex-girlfriend, Tiffany, had bashed him on three out of three of the talk shows she was invited onto after she publicly and embarrassingly called their two year relationship to a grinding halt. Richie hadn't been able to leave the house for a month. When he finally did, he was promptly served with a lawsuit from his old record label for failure to fulfill his side of a legally binding document. Since he couldn't perform, he couldn't make money._ _

__Things went rapidly downhill from there._ _

__So here he sat, a penniless shell of a man with a heart full of music but no words to go along with the melody he could feel along his fingertips as he reached over to brush one against his guitar's strings. The instrument hummed in appreciation before the gentle noise faded to nothingness._ _

__Just like his fifteen goddamned minutes of so-called fame._ _

__He threw his notebook out the window and didn't bother to watch it tumble and flap its way three stories down to the street below._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this and later chapters, the lyrics to 'Stitches' belong to Shawn Mendes, not Richie Tozier or myself. :3


	2. Hey, Look, Ma, I Made It

Eddie Kaspbrak hated garbage. It was official and unanimous. It stank, it was filthy, and apparently fate had deemed his hatred of garbage worthy enough to literally hit him over the head with a piece of it while he was walking next to a shady apartment complex.

"Son of a-"

He bit back a curse and rubbed his head with his left hand, hissing as he looked up as if in silent question as to where the hell the object had just come from. His right hand had instinctively come up to block his face and had ended up catching the projectile.

Immediately his attention was piqued. The notebook was initially pretty plain, a simple green spiral bound writing pad that college students could pick up for a dime around August. It was the writing scribbled on the cover that attracted Eddie's interest.

"Property of Tozier...?"

He hadn't even realized he had spoken until after the words had already left his lips. Eddie jumped a little, startled by his own voice. Despite the fact that he still unrepentantly _hated garbage_ , his fingers stubbornly refused to toss the notebook aside. Instead, Eddie hummed in thought and flipped it open, chestnut-brown eyes scanning the surprisingly empty contents of the notebook. 

It looked like song lyrics, but...

Eddie knew song lyrics. He _knew_ them inside and out. His own apartment was filled to bursting point with stacks of similar notebooks, except his musings and notes had taken over not only the page itself, but the margins, the backsides, and sometimes even the notebook's paper cover. 

Whoever had written these lyrics clearly didn't have a system. Each page was carefully blank, with the few sentences on each one scrunched and scribbled in the center. The handwriting was slanted and rushed and alternatively mashed close together and spaced far apart. 

Stapled into the back of the notebook haphazardly were a few blank pages of staff music, the notes seeming to be a striking contrast to the style of the lyrics. The music that seemed to go along with the lyrics was flowing and had almost no eraser marks around it. It was visibly apparent to someone with practice that the owner of this notebook was clearly more comfortable writing melodies than lyrics.

Still, it wasn't like the words that had been written in the notebook were _bad,_ per say, more unfinished than anything.

Eddie glanced up thoughtfully at the window the notebook had been haphazardly tossed from, before down once again at the spiral bound book in his hands.

He scanned the contents of the notebook carefully. The pages were slightly crinkled as though someone had beaten the hell out of the poor book, leaving it even shabbier than the ash stained fingertips adorning the cover. Still, the initial ideas were promising. It looked like whoever 'Tozier' was, they had fully completed at least one written score. Curious brown eyes danced over the notes as he hummed the tune to himself, brow furrowing as he realized somewhat belatedly that he _knew this song from somewhere._ He just couldn't quite place it without the words there to guide him.

"Hmm hmm hmmmm.....no, that's not it... Damn it, I _know_ this song."

Eddie frowned and flipped to the next page, nearly dropping the notebook in alarm as his eyes traced intimately familiar words.

Of course he knew this song.

He'd written it, after all.

_"You know that thing isn't due for like, another month and a half, right?" Stanley Uris questioned around a mouthful of spaghetti, pointing at the paper in front of Eddie accusingly even as the shorter man curled protectively around it._

_"You know this 'thing' is worth like, almost a quarter of my grade, right?" Eddie tossed back airily, idly drawing a thin line through a lyric and drawing an arrow indicating he wanted to switch some lines before his attention returned to his roommate in front of him._

_Stan rolled his eyes, clearly used to this level of affection from his friend. "Your sass, while appreciated, is neither wanted nor needed." he stated dryly, putting his head in his right hand and plopping the other one across from his lunch._

_Eddie continued. "Besides, Halford is a bitch anyways. She's making us work on our songs in class for credit. We basically have to show her we aren't putting these off 'til the last minute. It's not fun."_

_Stan swallowed before giving an appreciative hum. "Fair enough. I had her last year. By the way, she _always_ tries to get students to sell the rights to their song to a label as soon as they pass the course because she gets a commission or something for it. Her husband owns some record company, I guess. Be ready for that."_

_Eddie's heart leapt at the thought of his own work being publicly seen by someone besides his admittedly small circle of friends. "I don't think I'd mind somebody else singing my song." He swallowed once, a thin layer of sweat perspiring on his brow even as he spoke. "Y...You know that I-I can't-"_

_His stomach lurched at the very idea of being up on stage again._

_He'd done it, once._

_Eddie's insides continued to heave and roil as his eidetic memory tortured him with thoughts of fantastically bursting flashbulbs, vigorous rumbling of wickedly loud speakers, and oh, God not the **screaming!** The seething, horrifying beast that was the audience would reach out for him like he was the last remaining scrap of food at a particularly packed dinner table. Fingers clawing at his legs, barely missing, of course, until one got lucky. _

_A steel grip around his ankle, dragging him off the stage and into a swirling abyss of howls, hoots, tugging and pulling on him and suddenly he's on the dirty, rough sand of the mosh pit and being dragged backwards by the hood of his sweatshirt, it was tangling violently around his throat and he was clawing at it to no avail and he couldn't fucking **breathe-**_

_"Eddie! Snap out of it! Hey, hey, breathe. You're good, man. Nobody expects you to perform again. Not after what happened last time."_

_The distant sound of Stan's calm and soothing voice roused Eddie from his memory, his eyes flicking up from where they had been glued to his knees, along with his hands. He released what felt like a vice around his knees as he moved his hands to his pockets, biting his lip and looking miserably anywhere besides Stan._

_After a few moments where Stan continued to speak softly but firmly about nothing at all, Eddie spoke up._

_"...Sorr-"_

_Stan cut him off. "I swear if you apologize for having a panic attack right now."_

_Eddie smiled somewhat sheepishly after a few seconds._

_The taller man sighed and shoved his plate to the side to scoot closer to Eddie. "Hey, don't beat yourself up over stuff like this.. It was just an accident, and hey, look at you now! You're gonna be the greatest songwriter out there, even if you're going to be pimping yourself out to record labels for a living, and if you see something you want along the way, you reach out and fucking take it, okay?" Stan smirked somewhat bitterly. "And at the end of it all you can at least tell your mom you made it."_

_Eddie's eyes drifted down to the paper in front of him thoughtfully even as he flipped it over to the blank side and picked up his pencil. His mind was racing a thousand miles a minute as a vague and catchy chorus began to fill his head._

_"Stan....can you repeat that for me, please? A little slower?"_

What in the hell were the chances that the 'Tozier' the notebook proclaimed its owner to be was actually _Richie_ Tozier? The smarmy and vaguely dangerous looking singer who had promptly picked up his song from the label he sold it to upon completing the course. Eddie received exactly fifty three dollars for it. 

He had spent over two hundred hours of vigorously teaching himself how to mix on a computer and a turntable to submit his masterpiece, _"Hey, Look, Ma, I Made It."_

He got a B minus.

Never mind the fact that of all the possible musicians, it had to be Richie Tozier who sang it. The only possible candidate that Eddie could think of off the top of his head that could take a perfectly written song and absolutely destroy it. 

Not with his singing voice, of course. Despite all of the various rumors the average person could spit out at random intervals about the fallen from grace musician, nobody had any complaints about his voice. Before the whole scandal with Tozier and his girlfriend a few years back, Eddie had even been a fan of the singer. 

No, Tozier destroyed it with his reputation and antics. Nobody could take the message of the song seriously, no matter how admittedly well performed it was. When the singer was constantly being arrested for public intoxication, driving under the influence, and a symphony of miscellaneous charges, it was sort of difficult to be on his side.

Especially after what he did to his girlfriend after two years together and a single can of beer.

Eddie glanced back up at the window and back down at the notebook, a terrible sort of idea forming in his head. 

"This is stupid, Kaspbrak. Go home." he told himself firmly.

His feet steered him towards the entrance to the apartment complex instead, and he realized then and there he was screwed. 

_"I see it, I want it, I take it. Here I go, Stan. Let's see if I make it. And if I lose...boo hoo."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately Eddie didn't actually write "Hey, Look, Ma, I Made It". That honor belongs to Panic! At The Disco. ^v^


End file.
